October 30, 2007

I happened to hear... via IM. Otherwise, it'd've flown right by me. I'll add some comments here I guess. I promise only to be lazy and arbitrary.

ADDED: They're all asked if they'll pledge to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and they all hedge. At least three times, pushed, Hillary Clinton says she'll do "everything within my power" to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons. In other words, I can't promise, but I'll try — subject to my view of presidential power. But there is no follow up question. Earlier, she criticized Bush for supposedly exceeding presidential power. Here's what I would ask: "When you say you'll do everything in your power, what is it that you think is beyond presidential power that you would not do, even if you thought it would prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons?"

MORE: I spoke too soon, Richardson makes the pledge. He blathers, but initially he is clear that he's pledging.

I think that, in the aggregate, we're seeing more slogging and slugging in this one, and also more marked difference in where and how and from whom we're seeing fall-off.

I wonder how many have come to regret the elongated campaign season on which almost all of them bet.

***

A quiet question, addressed broadly, and without forgone conclusion: Has the longer season and the number of debates served the needs and purposes of the electorate, both specific and, more specifically, generally?

I remember when "publicly debate more" was a rallying cry, from various corners, of candidates and of the electorate/public. (Of course, I also remember the contra-cries, in various forms.)

A presidential candidate is being asked what he's going to do about the relative unpleasantness of airline travel these days (and specifically not--at least it wasn't asked, nor answered in that way--of security issues, or even TSA).

Reader_Iam: IN RE: length of campaign: I guess it is because it takes so much money these days, unavoidable given the geo. & pop. size. I'd much prefer a shorter season with weekly debates without any of the idiot moderators. And if someone doesnt poll at least 1%, GET OFF THE STAGE!

Your question is great, Althouse, and right on point: but because it contains a number of embedded questions, it would be too easy for Sen. Clinton to, if not dance around, then pick-and-choose about.

In an ideal world, I'd rather take what you pose and separate them out, in a situation where Sen. Clinton (actually, any and every candidate) could be engaged and pressed, piece by piece, and not just, effectively, say: "Enough of that. Next subject-segment!"

if you want that opinion it is that the longer primary seasonis not good because i disagree with the whole ideaof too many primaries and genuinely like the ideaof smoke filled rooms if not the actual smokecall me an old fashioned traditionalist cockroachbut i think the candidates were better whenthey were vetted and mostly chosenby party professionals who did all that dirtypolitical work showing up and organizing year after yearprimaries were generally beauty contestsand served to put the brakes on a genuine turkeyif you don't mind mixed metaphors

and i really mean it when i sayless democracy=better governmentalthough i should amend that to sayless fake democracy=better governmenti don't mind real democracy where you havelots of people really involvedwhich is very hard to do if you're choosing a candidateand that's where the mirrors come in

anyway these long drawn out primary campaignsdo the following--

bore people silly and turn them off

waste lots of money so the candidates are even more in hockto proverbial special interests who make the guyssitting in that old smoke filled room look like boy scouts

force candidates to say stupid things that come back to bite themif they need a little flexibility once elected

fracture party organizations so that a well organized candidatewith a machine such as mrs clinton can overwhelm and rollthe hollow shell of what's left of the party

in a similar way rich whackos such as you know whocan mobilize legions of keyboard kidz and drivea former vice presidential candidate and respected senatorout of the party with a stupid but well oiled primary challenge

shall i go on...i can think of a half dozen other reasonsbut i'm sure your eyes are glazing over so i'll quit

we need more professionalism and discipline in political partiesand less glittering and shiny fake democracy

and reader--i'm not sure what you meant about stuffingopinions into your mouthyou wrote that as if to mebut as you can seei have my opinions and you may have yourswhich are probably better than mine becauseof the 960 brain cell issueand anyway i'm a pretty wysiwyg cockroachwith few if any ulterior motives or designsto put opinions in anyone else's mouth or mandiblesas the case may be

TC, you can be a commenter here if and only if you keep your posts to 200 words or less. When I say you need to edit, I mean above all make it short enough so it doesn't block the way for people who want to scroll through the comments to find things they want to read. You can put your longer material on your own blog. It should be easy to remove the repetition and irrelevant material and get within the word limit.

I'm not imposing this word limit on anyone else, but I bet everyone else has self-imposed ideas about how long a comment can be, and it's probably 200 words or less, with 200 only to be approached if you've got something unusual that can't be made shorter. Some of the best commenters (and bloggers) put effort into producing pithy one liners. You'll get many more readers if you do that.

The first added question, about Hillary vis-a-vis executive power, is lacerating - but none of the other candidates on stage are in a position to credibly ask that question (or benefit from it) since they've boxed themselves in on this question. That's the question to ask loudly and repeatedly over the next year, but it's an argument against Hillary vis-a-vis the GOP candidate, not Hillary vis-a-vis the other Dem candidates.

A question I have for those who watched the debate. This morning, NPR played a clip of Hillary giving qualified support to some immigration idea that the Governor of New York came up with. NPR noted that Obama and Edwards jumped on her for not giving a straight answer, and played clips of them doing just that, and smarming about how important it is to be straight with the voters. My question is this: did either Obama or Edwards then go on to answer the question, and it's just the case that NPR edited the clips for effect, or did they really both totally ignore the question and talk about how Hillary wasn't answering the question right?

Reader:"Has the longer season and the number of debates served the needs and purposes of the electorate, both specific and, more specifically, generally?"

I would think that for those who worry about money n politics, a long campaign season followed by a very short primary season would be the worst imaginable situation, i.e. the configuration most likely to require candidates to obtain lots and lots of money.

I also think that the debates have not been as helpful as they could have been, but the reasons they haven't done as much as they could haven't been because it's a long season, it's a combination of a bloated field of candidates that the networks lack the courage to winnow, which results in less time for the serious candidates to talk, and the attitude of the American media corps that ask the questions. One of the differences between British political journalism and American political journalism is that the former is marked by a healthy mistrust and skepticism (bordering on total contempt) for the politicians of all parties and a better grasp of the material than the victim, while the latter is, relatively speaking, marked by fawning deference, poorly-disguised partisanship, and a layman's grasp of the issues (feigned or real). It would be shocking to hear someone - even Chris Matthews, the closest thing to Jeremy Paxman that America has - ask the question Ann posed, because the question presupposes a grasp of the issues involved, and a willingness to really thump a candidate in a way that is genuinely substantive and isn't just a cheap gotcha.

There's nothing wrong with the debates that couldn't be fixed if there were four candidates on stage and Antonin Scalia was asking the questions assisted by a bottle of Maker's Mark.

Ann Althouse said..."I bet everyone else has self-imposed ideas about how long a comment can be, and it's probably 200 words or less [ordinarily].... Some of the best commenters (and bloggers) put effort into producing pithy one liners."

Gee, I guess that's me totally out of the running the "commenter of the week," huh. ;)

Richardson is pledging to keep Iran from getting the bomb??? How, exactly, is Mr. Get-Out-Of-Iraq-This-Instant planning on doing that? I had respect for Richardson at the start of this campaign. I don't anymore.

Original Mike-Sometimes I get the feeling that the entire campaign process is designed specifically to do that - expose every flaw and defect of all comers. At the end of it you can't possibly hope to find someone that more than 49.9% of the population does respect.

I like the marathon approach to the White House [as opposed to the sprint.] Long campaigns test the candidate's mettle and management skills. It also gives time for little-campaigns-that-could to gather steam.

Of course, I'm sort of a NASCAR fan, and that "season" is 10 months long.

How can a Presidential candidate pledge to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons? All they CAN do is pledge to do 'everything in their power' to prevent it.

But the President isn't God, and he (or she) can't control everything that happens in the world. You might as well ask them to pledge that there won't be any more cases of genocide during their tenure, or that they will prevent the Chinese from making any more defective products, or prevent the Germans from raising taxes. The truth is, there is only so much thatanyone-- even the President-- can do.

As far as nuclear weapons are concerned, it is sixty year old technology and it's actually pretty well known by now how to make one. The only real hitch is acquiring enough fissile material, but given how much of it is already missing just within the former Soviet Union, as well as the fact that much more sophisticated methods have been developed for enriching Uranium and that Iran has had a nuclear reactor since the 1970s that we built for the Shah, it follows that if Iran is dead set on building a nuke the truth is there is very little that the President could do about it.

Eli, I responded in the other thread you posted this in, regarding why preventing Iran from getting nukes is well within a President's power.

One other thing, though, is that you're wrong on the ease of Iran making a nuclear weapon. Their nuclear plant (which was built by Germans, not Americans) neither uses nor produces weapons-grade materials. The USA *had* planned to give Iran a reprocessing plant for extracting plutonium from nuclear waste, but it never went through.

So Iran, as it exists today, has no known access to weapons-grade fissionable materials, which is why it is building processing plants to produce it. Your belief that fissionable material from the Soviet Union is easy to come by is without basis and is not shared by proliferation experts.

reader--that's oki think we're victims of the althouse pithiness campaigni was trying to write short aphoristic semi-snarky commentsand it went wrong so that people--yourself being a prime example--probably got the wrong ideaso once i expounded and bloviated everything became cleareralthough i expect plenty of disagreement out therewith my nostalgia for 1936

ruth anne for example likes a nascar primary season--you know nascar the sport that never ends--which is a fine metaphorexcept i'm wondering who's paying for the gasolenenot to mention the pit crewand what happens if mrs clinton's car spins outand obama and edwards crash at 190 mph trying to avoid herand the rest of the field is under a yellow flagbut their engines overheat or clutches burn outand finally hillary gets her car going againbut there's nobody left in the racehillary winsyou just know it's going to turn out like thisdon't you